That there is a difference of opinion existing in Texas in relation to the cou pursue at this period none can deny. Citizens alike distinguished for their worth and public services hold opposite views; and while all are united in the determination to maintain our constitutional rights, they differ as to the mode of accomplishing the same. In this I do not include that reckless and selfish class who, moved by personal ambition or a desire for office or spoil, desire a change of government in the hope that aggrandizement will attend them. I believe, however, that a large majority of the people, recognizing the obligations they owe to the Border States, who have so long stood as barriers against the assault of Abolitionism, desire to concert such measures as will not only conduce to their safety but the benefit of their South. As Executive of the State I have deemed it my duty to present to the other Southern States a proposition for a consultation having that object in view. Alabama has not yet responded to the same, and although the tenor of your letter indicates that she will pursue a different course, I trust that when the great interests at stake are duly considered by her people they will determine to join with Texas and a majority of the Southern States in an honest and determined effort to obtain redress for the grievances which the North has put upon us ere they take the fatal step, which, in my opinion, ultimately involves civil war and the ruin of our institutions, if not of liberty itself.

If Alabama has been the first to move in the direction which may possibly result in the severance of all connection with the Federal Government, it is a matter of pride to me that Texas has, in the time of peril, been the first to move in that direction calculated to secure Southern unity and co-operation. Texas is the only one of the States which possessed, ere her connection with the Union, full and complete sovereignty. Though she brought an empire into the Union and added vastly to the area of slavery, she arrogates to herself no especial privileges, nor has she yet consulted her own safety or interest, save in common with that of the entire South. Knowing the obligations which she took upon herself when she came into the Union, she has thus far shown no desire to relieve herself of those obligations until it is manifest that the compact made with her will not be observed. Having made an effort, in concert with her sister slave-holding States, to secure the observance of that compact and failed in that effort, it would then be her pride to sink all considerations prompted by her own ambition and share a common fate with them; but if, on the contrary, they, consulting their own interests and their own inclinations, neither seeking her counsel nor co-operation, act separately and alone, and abandon a Union and a Government of which she yet forms a part, Texas will then be compelled to leave a policy whereby she has course which her pride and her ancient character marks out before her.

Were I permitted to trust alone to the tenor of the first part of your communication, and had you given me no assurance of the fact that although Alabama desires to assure her sister slave-holding States that she feels that her interests are the same with theirs, and that a common destiny must be the same to all, and that she will, through her convention which assembles to-day, the 7th instant, withdraw from the present Union and take her position as a sovereign State, I could give you more assurances of my co-operation as Executive of Texas with Alabama in the present emergency. Should Alabama,